Robert Pickup, performing in Pretoria tonight, has the=20 world at his feet, writes COENRAAD VISSER WHEN Robert Pickup took the stage last month in Tempe,=20 Arizona, as this year’s winner of the young artists’=20 competition of the International Clarinet Society, he=20 was merely taking the next step along a career path=20 which saw him take […]
Meshack Mabogoane reports on the National Sorghum=20 Breweries’ deal with United Breweries National Sorghum Breweries’ (NSB) announcement this week=20 that India’s United Breweries (UB) would have a say in=20 the appointment of senior management marks a turning=20 point in its five-year history . The UB deal, sealed this week, is the first and most=20 substantive […]
Trade and investment are necessary to set Africa back on=20 the road toward economic development. Karen Harverson=20 Africa urgently needs trade and investment to drive its=20 development which is slower now than it was 30 years=20 ago, says one of Southern Africa’s leading economists. Tony Hawkins, professor of Business Studies at the=20 University of Zimbabwe, […]
The Mail & Guardian, the most “wired” newspaper in Africa, has launched a new media division to strengthen its electronic publishing programme. The new division, eM&G, will be focused on expanding the M&G’s Internet profile, developing specialised electronic services to harness the publishing opportunities presented by the information The M&G has committed two of its […]
Non-governmental organisations are more important now than before liberation, argues Paul van Zyl A FORTNIGHT ago, President Nelson Mandela signed into law the Bill which will establish the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. A study of the process which led to the formation of the truth commission provides a fascinating insight into the functioning of the […]
South African mercenaries have turned the tide of the civil war in Sierra Leone, reports Edward O’Loughlin Sierra Leone’s military government has been on a roll in recent weeks, driving rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) back from the capital Freetown and recapturing the vital diamond mining region of Kono. The change in fortunes […]
Rehana Rossouw Africa’s last colony, the Sahrawi Republic (Western Sahara), is battling for support from the South African government which, it was hoping, could play an active role in its struggle for freedom from Moroccan colonisers — who are applying pressure on South Africa not to do so. South Africa is the only country in […]
Gaye Davis GOVERNMENT employees who blow the whistle on corruption or maladministration will be protected from reprisals in terms of ground-breaking legislation currently being The proposed Open Democracy Act contains a “whistleblower” clause, protecting government employees who reveal wrongdoing. The draft legislation — currently in its 10th version — marks a complete break with the […]
THE report of the Arts and Culture Task Group (Actag) released this week raises, among many other questions, the issue of representation. The cultural organisations which exist in our society, almost without exception, still bear the imprint of the apartheid era. On one hand we have bodies like the Federasie vir Afrikaner Kultuur and the […]
Mehlo Mvelase and Ann Eveleth A faction fight between two Inkatha Freedom Party- aligned groups from northern KwaZulu/Natal on Wednesday night led to the police shooting eight people dead in Durban’s KwaMashu township, said sources on the scene. Relatives of the deceased told the Mail & Guardian police had been “used” by one side of […]
Lawyers accuse KwaZulu/Natal Attorney General Tim McNally of wilfully avoiding uncovering the truth behind hit squad activities, reports Ann Eveleth A former security branch policeman eager to open his bag of dirty tricks is likely to go to jail on weapons charges instead; a policeman roams free three months after an inquest implicated him as […]
The Mail & Guardian is one of the very few newspapers in South Africa showing strong and steady growth. Sales for the country’s leading independent, quality paper in the last six months are up 7,7% over the previous six The release of Audit Bureau of Circulation figures is a time of hyperbole and obfuscation among […]
Health care expert Paul Gross warns that Minister Nkosazana Zuma’s health insurance policy is fatally HEALTH Minister Nkosazana Zuma’s national health insurance system should have reassured those who expected draconian solutions to problems of access and financing in health care. But it remains flawed. I have looked at her committee of inquiry’s report, and judged […]
Paleo-tourism is the new buzzword after the discovery of the significance of ‘Little Foot’, report David Beresford and Eddie Koch In an office tucked away in a corner of the University of the Witwatersrand, a professor who looks disconcertingly like Albert Einstein can be found dreaming of a new form of tourism — a grand […]
Steuart Wright Public servants queue to place their bags on the conveyor-belt metal detector at Umtata’s Botha Sigcau government building. They wait patiently for the bags to emerge, unfazed by the fact there are no security personnel to check them anyway. It is part of the ritual of coming to work — in a building […]
School feeding schemes in the Eastern Cape have collapsed due to fraud and mismanagement, report Pat Sidley and Rod Amner President Nelson Mandela’s flagship presidential project, the school feeding scheme, has ground to a halt in the Eastern Cape. Fraud and incompetence has consumed the province’s R114-million budget for the year in just four months. […]
Deputy Agriculture Minister Thoko Msane Boldly Thoko where no woman … When Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964, Police Minister Sydney Mufamadi and Labour Minister Tito Mboweni were just beginning primary school. Thoko Msane, the Deputy Minister of Agriculture and the youngest member of Mandela’s Cabinet, had just been conceived. There are […]
Traditional doctors are coining it as the black business sector mushrooms, report Meshack Mabogoane and Eddie Koch The growth of black business in South Africa has reinforced another thriving economy — the informal sangoma and muti trade — as new entrepreneurs and executives resort to the supernatural for luck and to protect their cars, taxis, […]
In a blatant breach of international public broadcasting ethics, the SABC is screening promotional material which pretends to be educational, reports Justin Pearce Thursday afternoon on CCV-TV. You’ve recently had a baby, so when you hear that toilet training is the subject of today’s A Guide to Health, you take notice. The programme starts with […]
Pat Sidley IT’S not all bleak on the school-feeding front. Western Cape experts have piloted several projects they hope will nourish children, involve communities and assist the families of schoolchildren in nutrition education. The type of meal the province has settled for consists of a mealie-meal porridge with a sandwich and a soya- based flavoured […]
The United States is putting pressure on South Africa to break diplomatic ties with Cuba, reports Stefaans Brummer SOUTH Africa is fast becoming a proxy battlefield for American policy on Cuba — but Pretoria’s diplomats appeared this week to be resisting pressure to toe Uncle Sam’s line on Fidel Castro. Department of Foreign Affairs representative […]
Eddie Koch Farmers in the Potchefstroom district fear vast tracts of arable land in the North-West have been damaged by radioactive waste and contaminated ground water from neighbouring gold mines. The Council for Nuclear Safety (CNS) last month completed a R5-million clean-up operation aimed at removing tons of used pipes and machinery that had been […]
Marion Edmunds POLITICAL parties will scrum down to the debate that=20 everybody has been waiting for — the federalism debate=20 — next week at an all-day meeting of the=20 Constitutional Committee. Federalism is the crunch constitutional debate, the one=20 that will decide the shape of future South African=20 governments. It was the key point of […]
CINEMA: Justin Pearce THE Brady Bunch Movie plays in with a tracking shot down a street of shops offering body-piercing, cappucino, cellphones, smokelessness — all those fads which define the Nineties, if we are to believe Nineties lifestyle magazines. And in the midst of the film’s self-conscious check-list of all that is truly Nineties, we […]
South Africa has committed itself to an injection of=20 human rights principles into its foreign policy. As one=20 expert argues , there is no simple, mechanistic way to=20 do this. To refuse to have any contact or trade with=20 countries who show disrespect for human rights is to=20 condemn ourselves to a return to international=20 […]
Gauteng Finance MEC Jabu Moleketi talks to Aspasia Pragmatic idealist and communist, Jabu Moleketi, Gauteng Finance and Economics MEC is a living contradiction. In the space of a year, he has evolved from an MK soldier and communist party strategist into a convincing economics planner. Moleketi himself does not see an ideological conflict. “I do […]
What do you do when you discover your domestic worker=20 is HIV-positive? A Johannesburg doctor, who cannot be=20 named for professional reasons, came across two=20 startlingly different cases I am a doctor employed in one of the public hospitals=20 in Johannesburg. One of my duties is to consult with=20 patients in the hospitals’ so-called HIV […]
Simon Segal CNA-GALLO’S dominance of South Africa’s retail book industry will soon be challenged by two new players, one of which is opening the country’s largest book store at the end of October. The CNA-Gallo group, through its 302 CNA outlets and 10 Exclusive Books shops, accounts for some 75 percent of South Africa’s general […]
You’re not going to believe it, but Arts, Science and=20 Culture Director General Roger Jardine, who had penned=20 a prompt answer to our Cabinet Efficiency Test letter,=20 had his car hi-jacked last week — with his reply in=20 it. We await a fresh attempt. The M&G had sent a letter in the name of an […]
The Western Cape has come out tops as South Africa’s most competitive province in a report issued this week on the competitiveness of the nine provinces by the Foundation for Research and Development (FRD). Gauteng ranked second, followed by KwaZulu/Natal, Free State, Eastern Transvaal, North-West, Eastern Cape, Northern Province and Northern Cape. The provinces were […]
A human rights foreign policy is a laudable ideal, but=20 it leads to a minefield of conflicting priorities,=20 writes Danny Titus ONE cannot but wholeheartedly support the Mail Guardian’s headline last week: “Let human rights lead=20 the way in SA foreign policy”. South Africa is moving towards adding the international=20 element of human rights to […]
Shadley Nash Eastern Cape Muslims responding to a call to take up=20 arms against the rebel Serbs in Bosnia are being=20 trained in guerrilla warfare at a secret venue outside=20 Port Elizabeth. Sources have also confirmed that a training ground has=20 been established in Pietermaritzburg and another is=20 expected to be established in Cape Town. […]